Decaying Love
by ncfan
Summary: I don't call you Sasuke-kun anymore.


**Characters**: Sakura, Sasuke**  
>Summary<strong>: I don't call you Sasuke-kun anymore.**  
>Pairings<strong>: SasuSaku**  
>Disclaimer<strong>: I don't own Naruto.

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><p>I've stopped calling you Sasuke-kun. I don't know if you'll ever believe it given the way you think about me, but I don't call you that anymore. It doesn't seem appropriate, all things considered—after all, you're a traitor and since your current agenda involves slaughtering all of Konohagakure no Sato, I can only assume you want to kill me too.<p>

I call you Sasuke now. Uchiha Sasuke. You are Sasuke to me now, not Sasuke-kun, and somehow, that hook you stabbed me with so long ago won't unearth itself from my belly. I still think about you all the time.

All the time I think about you and damn if it doesn't hurt. You always knew how to make an impression, Sasuke, I have to give you that; even after you reveal yourself for a rat all any of us can see is that what we saw at first. On some level I still see the boy I pined after, the boy I somehow convinced myself that I loved. Naruto still wholly sees the boy he wanted so badly to be his friend, and that's why he still runs after you; he can't see anything else and he's so stubborn that he can't stand to admit when he's wrong.

When I think about the times when I first noticed you, it hurts because of my own foolishness. I know now that boys like you are the ones I should have stayed away from. Boys like you, I should have run in the other direction when I saw you coming. If I'd had any sense I would have realized what the massacre had done to you and I wouldn't have gone near you with a barge pole. People like you Sasuke, unstable people with murder in their eyes, they can never be whole again and they can never have healthy relationships with anyone.

I should have known better than to ever like you, have a crush on your or to have told you that I loved you. I should have known better than to convince myself that I loved you. It wasn't you; it was just my idea of you.

When I did get to know you, really know you, my foolishness still hurt, but the way you reacted to me hurt too.

You disparage my whole being. To this day, you see me as worthless, some cheap failure genin. You refuse to see my growth because your view of me has crystallized; something in you would break and shatter if you admitted to yourself for even a second that I changed. You can't exist without the view of me as a weak-willed, useless woman.

When I realized what and who you were, I wanted to help you. I wanted to help you find some normalcy again. I wanted to see you become whole. Not because I thought I loved you. Not because I had a crush on you. Not because I wanted to lord over Ino the fact that I knew you better than her.

Sasuke, I wanted to help you because you were my friend, or so I thought. I wanted to help you out of a sense of decency.

How did you repay me?

You repaid me with insults and assertions of uselessness. You repaid me with tears and betrayal. You repaid me with desertion, with forever tying my name to that of a traitor.

And now, you have repaid me by trying to kill me. I see what my 'help' is worth to you.

I wish I was like that other girl you betrayed. You know her, don't you? Her name is Karin. She has red hair and glasses and a body covered in scars, in case you've forgotten. She's a medic whom you used and discarded, just like me. In that we are sisters and I am glad to have a sibling, because now at least I have someone I can talk to about you with complete honesty. I wish I could be like her and say "I'm done with you." I wish I had her anger, I wish I had her spite and conviction. Things would be so much easier for me if I did.

But I can't. You know as well as anyone that I don't have that sort of nature. I still want to help you, my heart is still tied to you by ropes of fire and your hook is still in my belly. I still want to help you, except I know I can't.

I know I can't help you because if I try again you'll just kill me, or at least you'll try to. You always underestimate me Sasuke; if the next time you try to kill me I'm ready, I'll snap your neck before you could do anything. It would kill me to see you die but I'd do anything to live, Sasuke; I'm not going to drop that just because you decide I should die.

And you know what? It's the same if you decide to kill Naruto, Kakashi-sensei, Sai or anyone else in Konoha. I won't let you. I'll kill you myself before I let you hurt any more innocents. I'll put down the rabid dog you've become (_God man, I could see foam on your lips when you were shouting_) and even if Naruto hates me for the rest of my life and _I _hate myself for the rest of my life, I know I will have done the right thing. Konoha will still be standing the next day and you'll be rotting in a forest somewhere; a win-win situation, as far as I can tell.

Love decays, Sasuke. Love that was never really love and something more resembling an adolescent crush decays even faster. It falls apart like bread dunked in water. It rots like wood repeatedly exposed to rain. It rusts like old kunai. I've learned, and so have you. You loved people once; I know you did. This hatred you feel now on their behalf can't be called love, only a perversion.

Love decays, and whatever I felt for you is halfway gone. I still feel your hook in my belly, but I can almost ignore it now.

That's why I don't call you Sasuke-kun anymore.


End file.
